RL IS MAKING ME SAD (or some more CotS stuff)
SO I SAID, FUCKIT. HAVE SOME STUFF I WAS NEVER GOING TO LET COME OFF MY HARD DRIVE! (a mei loev caps, dammit) This is neither polished, nor edited, nor ... HANYTHING, REALLY! HAHA! It's only relevant in that it is 'official' Conceptions of the Self canon, but all of it is 'first run through' rough draft. I obviously wasn't happy with them, or they'd be PROPER intermissions. I do know they suck, lolz.
if you're wondering what RL stuff made me sad ... POLITICS. that is all.
Miles' Intermission
==
The very first rule that he and Sam hammered out between them was 'do not pry'.
His mother told him, sometimes, about how when he and Sam first met at the park, Miles with his nanny and Sam with his mother, they fought. Nonstop. Bloody fists and tears and bruises from teeth as far as the eye could see. Miles doesn't know what in the world two five year olds could have been fighting over. Possibly who was the best Power Ranger. The fact remained that Miles was an angry little kid. He didn't have the best examples at home, and wouldn't for several years. Sam had that perfectly little life with his mother who stayed at home with him and gave him suckers and his father who tossed him in the air and caught him.
Miles knew that back then, he'd been jealous out of his mind. Well, he imaged he was. He knew why he was angry, but why was Sam angry ...?
They remained bitter enemies until third grade. That's probably the only reason Miles even remembered that Sam had cried bitterly over the fact that Mikaela was totally in love with that guy who stared in The Mummy. Just previous to that episode, Sam had given his lunch to Miles because for the third time he'd come to school without lunch and they'd call his parents if he didn't have something to eat (and the last thing Miles wanted was to be brought to their attention). After Miles had enough of Mikaela's talking to the teacher of how awesome whatever-his-name had been, he'd ... sorta ... well, anyway, Mikaela had shunned him for the rest of that year for his abundant disdain for her idol.
After that, he and Sam somehow ended up best of friends.
In fourth grade, when there was ... a messy ... seperation going on at home, no matter how badly he behaved, Sam would just sort of blink at him and change the subject. He knew that Sam had been an anchoring force for him, and there was no telling where he would have ended up if they hadn't been friends. Sam had never suffered the way he had, and he never made the attempt to understand Miles. Never. He just accepted it all and learned the ins and outs of their friendship, accepting the rules with blithe ease just so long as Miles never got them into too much trouble. That was the way it was. Sam didn't ask about Miles, and Miles never let Sam's general ignorance of the way the world work get to him.
Sam, quite plainly, didn't really live in the world as Miles and everyone else knew it. Then again, having met Sam's rather ... unusual mother, he knew where he got it from.
So when Sam came back from being gone for a week with his pimped out Camaro, a wan and hollow look to his eyes, and laughingly showing off some of the most horrific bruises that Miles had ever seen (and he had seen a lot), he didn't ask. Rule number one: Do not pry.
==
[click]
" -- world wide communication black out resulted in a plane crashing in the middle of Mission City, and rioting broke out --"
[click]
"-- several dead. Due to the communication black out, there are no records of the events that took place in this very block, but the devestation is wide spread, and we are still finding bodies, two weeks later ..."
[click]
" -- a middle America ground zero. The fumes seemed to have caused linguring psychological issues for those who were present for this horrific event --"
[click]
==
Miles recognized that twarted fury the day Sam slammed his backpack into Trent's ugly mug.
Sam was ... unfamiliar. There was not prying, and then there was keeping secrets. He didn't used to have secrets, but now he did and he was keeping them tight to his chest with a feverish zeal that Miles wanted nothing to do with. He was high-strung and wan and there was a secret and an age to his eyes and Miles wondered what Sam had seen that had changed him so much. What happened to change his best friend in to the angry little five year old that he himself used to be.
He had to wonder where Sam's perfect life had gone.
==
==
Contrary to what seemed to be popular theory, Trent DeMarco hadn't come out of some stupid after school special or a movie that spent too much time on special effects and not enough on developing the characters. He knew his own press (according to Dad, only idiots weren't aware of their own press -- and only idiots actually bit into it). It wasn't his fault that it was simply easier for the card board cut outs in school to catagorize him as a stupid jock. Whatever. They could hang around Traquility -- Trent was going to get the fuck out of that town the moment he could. So what if Dad wanted him to grow up 'humble' from a small town? He wasn't his father's perfect little ornament, not a nice little trophey, not some proof of his father's accheivements. Trent's achievements were his own, so fuck off, Dad.
Was it any wonder why he and Mikaela gravitated toward one another? In the plastic white-smiles-surgical-precision-perfection land of California, they blended in -- but they weren't perfect little masks leering at each other. Mikaela has substance, and it was so rare --
So, yeah, they got their kicks blending in. Mikaela had been doing it long before Trent had moved into town, and with cookie-cutter uniform edges, he snapped right into place. It didn't take Mikaela long to catch onto the fact that his falsely uniform edges were just that. They got huge kicks out of pretending to be exactly what people thought they were, essentially mocking both the culture and the stupidity of their supposed 'peers'.
It was also why Trent really hated that Wit-whatever punk. Wittiky made Mikaela want to stop playing the game. He made her doubt the game and wonder if they were just as stupid and senseless as the other drones. After all, Wittiker certainly didn't play the game, and he didn't seem to care what kind of derision it earned him. God -- that kid just pissed Trent off. He couldn't hardly think straight when it came to that little punk, which was probably why he really couldn't remember how to pronounce his stupid last name. It was just a sort of dull roaring in his ears and all of his words just tangled up and it probably made him play 'stupid jock' to the 'T'. Little Wiltiky probably never had to worry about being just another status symbol to his Dad. Dad would have murdered Trent if he tried something as degrading as trying to sell family heirlooms in the classroom -- or even think about visiting EBay.
It was too 'plebian'.
What Mikaela could possibly find interesting about that, he couldn't see. All he knew was that there was some unnamed unseen looming thing between her and that little punk, and he could feel the situation slipping between his hands like everything good in his life always had.
Was it really that unreasonable that it made him furious?
==
"Your mother calls you bunny?" A secret, almost enthusastic smile.
A roll of the eyes. "God, Trent, don't remind me. I don't know why, she just does. Always has, for as long as I remember."
"Hey -- maybe I can use it. Hm?" A fair immitation of a 'George of the Jungle' stance and expression. "You: bunny. Me: Trent!"
A delighted laugh. "Smooth move, caveman. But I'm not your little bunny."
"You don't have to tell me twice," with a wide relaxed smile. "But it's either that or 'honey'. We're supposed to be dating, right? Or -- I could call you 'sweetheart'."
"Call me 'sweetheart' and die, Trent."
"Well, then Bunny it is."
==
Mikaela was probably right -- and that burned him more than the fact that she was hanging out with that Wiltikery guy and his weird tree-climbing friend. He didn't know if that punk actually bit into the whole 'dumb jock' routine or if he had caught onto the routine, but it hardly mattered -- the implications drove him crazy. He didn't know what it was they were doing -- what it was about that kid that made Mikaela decide that she didn't want to pretend anymore.
==
(It was the first time in a long time that Barricade came back around to himself, taken off AR and able)to some hidden extent(to reason.)
If Barricade thought life -- to quote the meat bags -- 'ultimately sucked' previously, when he was partnered (very uncomfortably, thanks) to Frenzy on loan from Soundwave (no, really, you shouldn't have), it sucked three times as hard these days. First of all, he didn't know what the fraggin' Pit Soundwave did to him, but it made Barricade's processor slag every time the little glitch got his fraggin' head detached. He had the very nasty suspicion that the fraggin' telepath got his 'jollies' (fraggin' little glitch and that fraggin' program that glitched his own head!) from doing things like that.
If his processor got slagged one more time by that ... whatever the hell Soundwave did to him, he knew he'd be nothing better than a drone. Between 'intellectuals' like Soundwave and he ... the 'sophisticated sadists', that was the last thing Barricade wanted. Then again, he really shouldn't be surprised. Soundwave knew that he got a kick out of seducing mechs into believing him and then laughing in their face when the most damage could be caused. And Frenzy was a stupidly naive mech for a Decepticon, too. It came from the symbiotic relationships between Soundwave and his little army of glitches. They trusted that CPC raider completely.
Yes, it had to be Soundwave getting his own kick out of partnering one of his minions to Barricade and doing -- making some kind of program -- some kind of glitch --
Frag him to the Pit! Of all mechs, Soundwave should know that Frenzy runs off on his own because he's a little over-eager bit of scrap! Barricade expected to keep the yellow slagger busy while Frenzy took care of those skin bags of disgusting fluid, and what did Frenzy do? Get his fragging head cut off. Getting tossed about by that slagger hadn't helped, either. It had taken Barricade all night and day to recover enough to be able to act when he received the transmission.
Then the fragger got his slaggin' self killed again when Barricade was right there and the All Spark wasn't far at all!
His processor wasn't in the best (not the best) of shape. It was h-gh-h-a-sa-hard to create n-n-n-n-n-n-n -- new memories. Or th-th-think f-forward. It kept g-g-g-gkl-glkit-glitching. Frag Soundwave! He'd probably think it was fu-fu-fu-u-u-u--- slaggin' hilarious.
An-n-n-n-n-n-n-- now, now, he was even m-m--m-m-m-m-ore fragged!
C-c-core instability-t-t-t-ty. B-b-b-b-litzz-z-z-wing, the frag-g-g-ger!
The All Spark. That was what was important. Hunt the All Spark. Hunt the Autobots. It was the o-o-o-o-nly-ly-ly-ly-ly thing he c-c-co-co-co-ould-d-d th-thin-think-k-k clea-clea-r-r-r-r -ly-ly-ly --
It was the only objective. The All Spark was the only objective he had. Frenzy's head sparked in his glove box, but Barricade just blocked his sensors, knowing instinctively that he must not think about why his partner was in pieces, or why the parts were so seperated. He must not.
Only objective.
==
Through trial and error, Barricade learned not to question a lot of things. Mostly, because everytime he questioned something, his processors always ended up tons more damaged than they were before. Again, he cursed the lack of a medic on Megatron's prime group. Those Autobot slaggers certainly had a medic -- from the very first, as a matter of fact. The closest that Megatron's chosen group had to a medic was Starscream -- and that slagger was a scientist, and so persnickety and treacherous that a mech would be safer baring their spark chamber to Bonecrusher. Mostly, they hid their wounds and didn't let the others know they had them if it could be helped. Megatron thought it was amusing to have an army that was the equivalent to a bunch of very ravenous Spark ravers.
Which should explain why Barricade was a lone wolf. He operated alone, got injured as little and few times as possible, and tied off his own lines if they were cut or broke. He wasn't stupid -- he knew it was why he had survived the ranks for so long. There were numerous mechs both stronger and bigger than he was. Therefore, he drew as little attention to himself as possible. Hell, the Autobots hadn't even been fully aware of his existence until he started getting in fights with that little yellow slagger. Oh, now Prime knew about him, but what did it matter?
All Spark. That was what mattered.
That and going up country. Why? Barricade didn't question. It was one of those matters of the spark that he had learned to listen to a long time ago.
==
Had Barricade the processor power to consider it, or was lacking the firewalls put in place to keep him from exactly that, he would have realized (and found it a relief) that he was being driven northward. It meant that all hope was not lost. The destruction of the All Spark was not the end.
Or it was just as likely that he would have considered it another glitch slipped deep in his processor, slowly melting his circuits to slag while his programs were too fractured to notice.
==
==
nevar fear, I am still arguing with Prime's intermission. That and Chapter Ten. A blessing and a curse, yo.
if you're wondering what RL stuff made me sad ... POLITICS. that is all.
Miles' Intermission
==
The very first rule that he and Sam hammered out between them was 'do not pry'.
His mother told him, sometimes, about how when he and Sam first met at the park, Miles with his nanny and Sam with his mother, they fought. Nonstop. Bloody fists and tears and bruises from teeth as far as the eye could see. Miles doesn't know what in the world two five year olds could have been fighting over. Possibly who was the best Power Ranger. The fact remained that Miles was an angry little kid. He didn't have the best examples at home, and wouldn't for several years. Sam had that perfectly little life with his mother who stayed at home with him and gave him suckers and his father who tossed him in the air and caught him.
Miles knew that back then, he'd been jealous out of his mind. Well, he imaged he was. He knew why he was angry, but why was Sam angry ...?
They remained bitter enemies until third grade. That's probably the only reason Miles even remembered that Sam had cried bitterly over the fact that Mikaela was totally in love with that guy who stared in The Mummy. Just previous to that episode, Sam had given his lunch to Miles because for the third time he'd come to school without lunch and they'd call his parents if he didn't have something to eat (and the last thing Miles wanted was to be brought to their attention). After Miles had enough of Mikaela's talking to the teacher of how awesome whatever-his-name had been, he'd ... sorta ... well, anyway, Mikaela had shunned him for the rest of that year for his abundant disdain for her idol.
After that, he and Sam somehow ended up best of friends.
In fourth grade, when there was ... a messy ... seperation going on at home, no matter how badly he behaved, Sam would just sort of blink at him and change the subject. He knew that Sam had been an anchoring force for him, and there was no telling where he would have ended up if they hadn't been friends. Sam had never suffered the way he had, and he never made the attempt to understand Miles. Never. He just accepted it all and learned the ins and outs of their friendship, accepting the rules with blithe ease just so long as Miles never got them into too much trouble. That was the way it was. Sam didn't ask about Miles, and Miles never let Sam's general ignorance of the way the world work get to him.
Sam, quite plainly, didn't really live in the world as Miles and everyone else knew it. Then again, having met Sam's rather ... unusual mother, he knew where he got it from.
So when Sam came back from being gone for a week with his pimped out Camaro, a wan and hollow look to his eyes, and laughingly showing off some of the most horrific bruises that Miles had ever seen (and he had seen a lot), he didn't ask. Rule number one: Do not pry.
==
[click]
" -- world wide communication black out resulted in a plane crashing in the middle of Mission City, and rioting broke out --"
[click]
"-- several dead. Due to the communication black out, there are no records of the events that took place in this very block, but the devestation is wide spread, and we are still finding bodies, two weeks later ..."
[click]
" -- a middle America ground zero. The fumes seemed to have caused linguring psychological issues for those who were present for this horrific event --"
[click]
==
Miles recognized that twarted fury the day Sam slammed his backpack into Trent's ugly mug.
Sam was ... unfamiliar. There was not prying, and then there was keeping secrets. He didn't used to have secrets, but now he did and he was keeping them tight to his chest with a feverish zeal that Miles wanted nothing to do with. He was high-strung and wan and there was a secret and an age to his eyes and Miles wondered what Sam had seen that had changed him so much. What happened to change his best friend in to the angry little five year old that he himself used to be.
He had to wonder where Sam's perfect life had gone.
==
==
Contrary to what seemed to be popular theory, Trent DeMarco hadn't come out of some stupid after school special or a movie that spent too much time on special effects and not enough on developing the characters. He knew his own press (according to Dad, only idiots weren't aware of their own press -- and only idiots actually bit into it). It wasn't his fault that it was simply easier for the card board cut outs in school to catagorize him as a stupid jock. Whatever. They could hang around Traquility -- Trent was going to get the fuck out of that town the moment he could. So what if Dad wanted him to grow up 'humble' from a small town? He wasn't his father's perfect little ornament, not a nice little trophey, not some proof of his father's accheivements. Trent's achievements were his own, so fuck off, Dad.
Was it any wonder why he and Mikaela gravitated toward one another? In the plastic white-smiles-surgical-precision-perfection land of California, they blended in -- but they weren't perfect little masks leering at each other. Mikaela has substance, and it was so rare --
So, yeah, they got their kicks blending in. Mikaela had been doing it long before Trent had moved into town, and with cookie-cutter uniform edges, he snapped right into place. It didn't take Mikaela long to catch onto the fact that his falsely uniform edges were just that. They got huge kicks out of pretending to be exactly what people thought they were, essentially mocking both the culture and the stupidity of their supposed 'peers'.
It was also why Trent really hated that Wit-whatever punk. Wittiky made Mikaela want to stop playing the game. He made her doubt the game and wonder if they were just as stupid and senseless as the other drones. After all, Wittiker certainly didn't play the game, and he didn't seem to care what kind of derision it earned him. God -- that kid just pissed Trent off. He couldn't hardly think straight when it came to that little punk, which was probably why he really couldn't remember how to pronounce his stupid last name. It was just a sort of dull roaring in his ears and all of his words just tangled up and it probably made him play 'stupid jock' to the 'T'. Little Wiltiky probably never had to worry about being just another status symbol to his Dad. Dad would have murdered Trent if he tried something as degrading as trying to sell family heirlooms in the classroom -- or even think about visiting EBay.
It was too 'plebian'.
What Mikaela could possibly find interesting about that, he couldn't see. All he knew was that there was some unnamed unseen looming thing between her and that little punk, and he could feel the situation slipping between his hands like everything good in his life always had.
Was it really that unreasonable that it made him furious?
==
"Your mother calls you bunny?" A secret, almost enthusastic smile.
A roll of the eyes. "God, Trent, don't remind me. I don't know why, she just does. Always has, for as long as I remember."
"Hey -- maybe I can use it. Hm?" A fair immitation of a 'George of the Jungle' stance and expression. "You: bunny. Me: Trent!"
A delighted laugh. "Smooth move, caveman. But I'm not your little bunny."
"You don't have to tell me twice," with a wide relaxed smile. "But it's either that or 'honey'. We're supposed to be dating, right? Or -- I could call you 'sweetheart'."
"Call me 'sweetheart' and die, Trent."
"Well, then Bunny it is."
==
Mikaela was probably right -- and that burned him more than the fact that she was hanging out with that Wiltikery guy and his weird tree-climbing friend. He didn't know if that punk actually bit into the whole 'dumb jock' routine or if he had caught onto the routine, but it hardly mattered -- the implications drove him crazy. He didn't know what it was they were doing -- what it was about that kid that made Mikaela decide that she didn't want to pretend anymore.
==
(It was the first time in a long time that Barricade came back around to himself, taken off AR and able)to some hidden extent(to reason.)
If Barricade thought life -- to quote the meat bags -- 'ultimately sucked' previously, when he was partnered (very uncomfortably, thanks) to Frenzy on loan from Soundwave (no, really, you shouldn't have), it sucked three times as hard these days. First of all, he didn't know what the fraggin' Pit Soundwave did to him, but it made Barricade's processor slag every time the little glitch got his fraggin' head detached. He had the very nasty suspicion that the fraggin' telepath got his 'jollies' (fraggin' little glitch and that fraggin' program that glitched his own head!) from doing things like that.
If his processor got slagged one more time by that ... whatever the hell Soundwave did to him, he knew he'd be nothing better than a drone. Between 'intellectuals' like Soundwave and he ... the 'sophisticated sadists', that was the last thing Barricade wanted. Then again, he really shouldn't be surprised. Soundwave knew that he got a kick out of seducing mechs into believing him and then laughing in their face when the most damage could be caused. And Frenzy was a stupidly naive mech for a Decepticon, too. It came from the symbiotic relationships between Soundwave and his little army of glitches. They trusted that CPC raider completely.
Yes, it had to be Soundwave getting his own kick out of partnering one of his minions to Barricade and doing -- making some kind of program -- some kind of glitch --
Frag him to the Pit! Of all mechs, Soundwave should know that Frenzy runs off on his own because he's a little over-eager bit of scrap! Barricade expected to keep the yellow slagger busy while Frenzy took care of those skin bags of disgusting fluid, and what did Frenzy do? Get his fragging head cut off. Getting tossed about by that slagger hadn't helped, either. It had taken Barricade all night and day to recover enough to be able to act when he received the transmission.
Then the fragger got his slaggin' self killed again when Barricade was right there and the All Spark wasn't far at all!
His processor wasn't in the best (not the best) of shape. It was h-gh-h-a-sa-hard to create n-n-n-n-n-n-n -- new memories. Or th-th-think f-forward. It kept g-g-g-gkl-glkit-glitching. Frag Soundwave! He'd probably think it was fu-fu-fu-u-u-u--- slaggin' hilarious.
An-n-n-n-n-n-n-- now, now, he was even m-m--m-m-m-m-ore fragged!
C-c-core instability-t-t-t-ty. B-b-b-b-litzz-z-z-wing, the frag-g-g-ger!
The All Spark. That was what was important. Hunt the All Spark. Hunt the Autobots. It was the o-o-o-o-nly-ly-ly-ly-ly thing he c-c-co-co-co-ould-d-d th-thin-think-k-k clea-clea-r-r-r-r -ly-ly-ly --
It was the only objective. The All Spark was the only objective he had. Frenzy's head sparked in his glove box, but Barricade just blocked his sensors, knowing instinctively that he must not think about why his partner was in pieces, or why the parts were so seperated. He must not.
Only objective.
==
Through trial and error, Barricade learned not to question a lot of things. Mostly, because everytime he questioned something, his processors always ended up tons more damaged than they were before. Again, he cursed the lack of a medic on Megatron's prime group. Those Autobot slaggers certainly had a medic -- from the very first, as a matter of fact. The closest that Megatron's chosen group had to a medic was Starscream -- and that slagger was a scientist, and so persnickety and treacherous that a mech would be safer baring their spark chamber to Bonecrusher. Mostly, they hid their wounds and didn't let the others know they had them if it could be helped. Megatron thought it was amusing to have an army that was the equivalent to a bunch of very ravenous Spark ravers.
Which should explain why Barricade was a lone wolf. He operated alone, got injured as little and few times as possible, and tied off his own lines if they were cut or broke. He wasn't stupid -- he knew it was why he had survived the ranks for so long. There were numerous mechs both stronger and bigger than he was. Therefore, he drew as little attention to himself as possible. Hell, the Autobots hadn't even been fully aware of his existence until he started getting in fights with that little yellow slagger. Oh, now Prime knew about him, but what did it matter?
All Spark. That was what mattered.
That and going up country. Why? Barricade didn't question. It was one of those matters of the spark that he had learned to listen to a long time ago.
==
Had Barricade the processor power to consider it, or was lacking the firewalls put in place to keep him from exactly that, he would have realized (and found it a relief) that he was being driven northward. It meant that all hope was not lost. The destruction of the All Spark was not the end.
Or it was just as likely that he would have considered it another glitch slipped deep in his processor, slowly melting his circuits to slag while his programs were too fractured to notice.
==
==
nevar fear, I am still arguing with Prime's intermission. That and Chapter Ten. A blessing and a curse, yo.